atlocal.space

Inspiration

The concept and popularity of Pokemon Go showed that people would use augmented reality on a mobile device if the user experience was fun and/or compelling. So we took that idea and built a location connected AR app that utilizes location data in an actual app.

What it does

atlocal.space is a mobile app that connects users with the world around them through the use of location services, and augmented reality (AR).

How we built it

We built out an app that uses several different elements. The main mobile app is a Unity based mobile engine that takes advantage of multiple APIs and back end services. It connects to a node.js backend that brokers data between ESRI, Panasonic-Avionics, a messaging service, and mapquest.

Challenges we ran into

Given the time constrains, and some tricks with getting the APIs to talk together, some of the data we wanted to include was harder to connect to than expected. This meant that some of the features we wanted to implement were not added in to the final app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a working Augmented Reality mobile app that is connected to location services, using several different APIs in less than 24hrs. No sleep!

What we learned

Location services are still much harder than they should be for adding in data beyond what is already online in existing systems.

What's next for atlocal.space

Depending on the reception for the app, we could see building out the service in several different ways to allow for a larger range of services.